Fiesta of Futility

It's summer fiesta season here in Spain and in today's Camino a Ítaca we look one of the most widely extended fiestas takes place, the Fiesta of Futility, the 'oposiciones'. Click over to read the originally published piece in Spanish in the HOY the originally published piece in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

It’s that time of year again. It’s when every town in the region gears up for their summer festivals. And today one of the only festivals that encompasses the entire autonomous community will take place. It’s the biannual, or in this case annual, Sisyphean fiesta of futility.

It’s a fiesta that reenacts the Greek myth where Sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down again, incessantly having to repeat this pointless task for eternity in Hades.

In what is perhaps the biggest waste of time and energy that this country ever produces, today thousands of opositores for education will sit their meaningless exam in the hope of securing one of the few plazas on offer this year.

And it makes no sense at all.

Yet it’s something so accepted by the educational community that these exams are something akin to the sun rising in the East, something immutable, unchangeable and permanent.

Yet in few other country in the world do public systems choose their teachers in this manner. In other countries, like my native Canada, teachers are chosen on their merit and their ability to teach, not their ability to memorize 69 topics on various subjects, many of which have absolutely nothing to do with teaching.

In other countries teachers apply for jobs just as they would any other job and they are hired if the school considers them the right fit for the job or not. And after a trial period, and as with other jobs, if they aren’t the right fit, they are asked to leave.

Yet here in Spain teachers aren’t chosen on their merits or their abilities as teachers. They are chosen on their ability to memorize this enormous list. If you take a secondary English teacher for example, some of the more useless topics include the history of the Norman conquest, the socioeconomic development of Great Britain in the XVIII century and the historical evolution of the United States.

This means that the person chosen to teach our children may have been able to memorize the names of every president of the United States but may only have a tenuous understanding of things like second language acquisition theory, how to motivate teenagers or even have the vocation for teaching. Yet, once they pass the exam they have a job for life. It’s like the administration is at odds with itself, not trusting their own universities to train their prospective teachers adequately.

Even if they do pass the impracticable exam, they may not even get a position and the boulder rolls down the hill. Rather than devoting their time and energy on training, mentoring, class planning and working to become better professionals, these poor Sisypheans are doomed to return to studying the useless topics for their next opportunity at the exam and may lose a decade or more of time which could have been better employed at becoming better teachers. 

If the administration is truly interested in bettering our education system, it’s time to stop obsessing about the curriculum and take a deep look at how those who impart it are chosen.